Hanoi will start building a second pipeline bringing water from the Da River to the capital in September. The decision came after the existing one broke on Thursday afternoon – the eighth time since the VND1.5 trillion ($70.8 million) pipeline was built in 2009. The incident disrupted the daily lives of 70,000 city residents like Nguyen Linh Van, 28, of Thanh Xuan district, whose family of five had to ration the water stored in their water tank when the pipes ran dry. “As of this morning, water had not yet been provided to us,” she said. According to Hung, there was no official report to explain why the pipeline broke, although the Ministry of Construction required the State Authority for Construction Quality Inspection and Vietnam Institute for Building Materials to assess its quality. Experts said the work was shoddy and that the city had not carefully monitored the construction process. Vice Chairman of the capital People's Committee Nguyen Quoc Hung said at a meeting on Thursday that the city was committed to strictly supervising the construction process of the second pipeline, from design to implementation, in order to ensure that it was of better quality. The city previously ordered Vinaconex Clean Water Joint Stock Company, which built the first pipeline, to build the second. However, the project was never implemented. (Vietnamnews.vn July 12)
